Proposed German law aims to send pirates to prison

Germans caught illegally downloading movies and music could face up to five …

A proposed German law could result in file sharers getting some hard jail time. Under provisions of the bill, people who download movies and music could face up to two years. Real pirates—those who illegally download movies and music for commercial distribution—could receive five-year prison sentences if converted. The German government do throw consumers a bone in the proposed legislation, as copying DVDs that they own for backup or other personal use would remain legal under the law.

Christian Democratic Party spokesperson Günther Krings likened file-sharing to shoplifting, saying that the proposed law is necessary because "there should be no legal distinction between stealing chewing gum from a shop and performing an illegal download."

Krings' assertion is debatable, at best. Unlike shoplifting a pack of gum or candy bar, which results in one fewer pack of gum in the store owner's inventory, downloading music and movies does not automatically equate to a lost sale, and there's no loss of physical inventory. In fact, the biggest problem facing the music industry is apathy, not file sharing. P2P users actually do buy music, and if consumers liked what they were hearing a bit more, they would buy more albums. It's the same story for the motion picture industry, which has seen theater attendance drop because the public doesn't think Hollywood has been making very many good movies lately.

As is the case in other nations, the German music industry is asserting that such legislation is necessary, pointing to a seven-year decline in sales totalling 45 percent since 1998. Oh, and apparently German PTA meetings look quite a bit different than they do in the US:

Many Germans watch the latest Hollywood film at home before it has reached the cinemas; parents’ evenings sometimes end with a showing of an illegally copied film in the school gym.

Man, all we get at my daughter's school is some store-bought chocolate-chip cookies and some weak decaf in the cafeteria.

Large-scale pirates—the kind that are responsible for the five-dollar DVDs sold on street corners in seedy neighborhoods—definitely could use a dose of jail time. However, criminalizing all illicit download activity is not going to help produce better movies and music. Perhaps a few would-be downloaders will be scared straight by the prospect of jail time. But until both moviemakers and the record labels move to fix their broken business models, no amount of scare tactics will cause movie and music sales to reverse their long decline.